Thematic Apperception Test TAT

TAT is “a projective test consisitng of a series of ambiguous pictures about which participants are asked to make up a story. Researches then code the stores for motivational themes: Do the stories describe people seeking success or achievement? Power? Affiliation with other people? Intimacy in a close relationship? The motives researchers code from People’s TAT stores are in fact highly predictive of their behavior over time.” - Kowalski, Psychology, 5th Edition

This could be an interesting application in design research. Designers are commonly searching for the user’s goals/aspirations in addition to needs. This is a method in which we could extract them. Alternatively, it would be interesting to alter the TAT test to where the participant looks at a photo of the proposed product with a person & makes up a story around that. The goal would be to understand what potential uses or scenarios exist that was not within the perspective of the product development team.